Yup. You know who it is; it’s that lady with the kids named Lemojello and Oranjello. My friend knows her.
He was scared shitless! At the hospital he refused to pick them up because he was afraid he’d break them-- until a nurse yelled at him. When we returned a week after my release to pick up The Boy (they were both under 5 lbs and had to stay a bit after I was let go) the nurses suspiciously asked us how old we were-- as if if we gave a number she didn’t approve of she’d not give us our son.
P.S. I was 22 and hubby was 27. He looked a lot younger and I looked a lot older.
Actually yes I have. I was living on $15 a month for food while working. I was told to my face that I was refused food stamps because I owned my yugo outright. I saw people in there driving new cars and popping out a kid every time they needed to renew some benefit or another, I saw people on food stamps buying steak and lobster [raw, because if you have to take it home and cook it it was permissible on food stamps]
I lived on 13th Bay St in Norfolk, a slum because that was where I could get a studio for $300 a month. I only had local phone service because it was $15 for the month. I shopped in the crunch and dent veggie aisle, and I fished for crab and spot because I had a deal with a local fish market to trade the ones I wasn’t going to be eating for stuff like milk and bread or different sea food for variety. I washed all my clothing by hand because I couldn’t afford to use a laundromat. I was glad to work the night shift because I could barely afford the $10 a month the electricity for the refrigerator cost me, this way I didn’t need to pay for the electricity to run lights or a TV, and I could do my cooking in the microwave at work.
Bitter? Fuck yes. I dropped 35 pounds in that year because I pretty much was able to afford a single meal a day that was basically rice, beans and fruits/veggies about to be thrown away by the grocery.
It’s something to do with babbies, right ?
Former Food Stamp caseworker checking in.
I never, ever, not once, checked anyone’s taxes. I did check paystubs – unless you’re self-employed, in which case I HAD to take your word for it. If I suspected you were scamming, I could request your checking/savings accounts – however, if you simply told me you didn’t have a bank account, I had to take your word for it. Child support, I could check - I had access to the CS database. Alimony, no. Investments - no, unless you told me you had them. Trusts - only if you told me you had one (I ran into this ONCE). As far as income tax refunds went – we didn’t count them as income and only counted them as an asset if your tax refund was still sitting in the bank 6 months after you got it – which NEVER happened because most people spend their returns pretty quickly.
Loans - never, because they didn’t count as income. Gifts - only if you told me about it, and even then I was only interested if it was cash. Properties - I had access to the DMV database but if I saw multiple cars in your name all you had to do was write me a statement saying you didn’t own most of them (which often was true as the DMV was notoriously slow about updating their stuff). I could look up your house on the county property website but very rarely had reason to do this since most people were renting or living with Mom & Dad or other family members, very few clients were homeowners.
Rent and mortgage - I had to take your word for it unless you told me some crazy amount. Utilities - didn’t matter, everyone got a standard deduction. If you told me you paid for utilities I had to take your word for it. The only time I needed a copy of your utility bill is if you were trying to get emergency assistance to pay for it.
Car loans - never. Insurance - never. Social Security - I had access to their database. I had access to another database that would tell me if you’d recently been hired anywhere – I busted a lot of people with that one. I could also use the child support database a lot of times to prove whether or not your Baby Daddy was living with you or elsewhere. I also had access to the Unemployment database.
Most of the time I only wanted paystubs. I do remember once busting a family that claimed to be 0 income – I made them bring in their bank statement and sure enough they had a $700 deposit – they “forgot” a parent had given them some money.
If I suspected someone was lying, we had a guy in our office that investigated stuff like that - he’d go talk to neighbors, etc. We once caught an upper middle class man posing as a homeless man to get benefits. My biggest catch was a bitch who had been claiming VERY low income for years and years – I found out she was married to a guy making 80k a year and had been using her maiden name with us all along. She’d stolen 40k in Food Stamps alone, that’s not counting all the other assistance she was giving.
Neither of these people were prosecuted, of course.
Then there were those cases where I knew they HAD to be lying, but I couldn’t touch them – this is mostly with people who were self-employed yet smart enough to tell me they didn’t have a bank account.
So a lot of the time my hands were very much tied. I had 800 something cases to deal with so it’s not like I had a lot of time to “investigate” anything.
Oh – and if you were frauding Social Security or Unemployment, I’d get fired for telling them.
All of that said – speaking as someone who has been on FS and a caseworker, I can tell you – you’d be amazed at how resourceful people can be. Just because a woman came into my office with a nice purse or acrylic nails didn’t mean she wasn’t broke. The purse could have been a Christmas present. The acrylic nails could have been an at-home job or done on the cheap at the local beauty school by a student. I never saw what they were driving however cars didn’t really count as assets for FS – only if you owned more than 2 outright and even then they had to be worth a lot of money. Plus just because someone is driving a car doesn’t mean they own it, nor does it mean they’re making the payments on it.
I never saw someone lose FS over cars – it just doesn’t happen often. I did have 1 girl lose her Medicaid over her car – her grandmother had bought her a brand new car outright and it made her over the asset limit for adult Medicaid.
The vast majority of my fraudsters were people who really WERE poor and just barely over the income limit – these didn’t bother me too much. As far as middle class fraudsters go, I had quite a few of those too – truckers’ wives were really bad about it. “Single moms” also scammed a lot – they’d lie and say their baby daddy wasn’t around, and it’d turn out he was living with her and working, and since they had a kid together his income counted and they’d be over income.
I saw more Wal-Mart employees in my office than any other business, interestingly.
As far as your Food Stamp card goes – I could see where you used it and how much you spent, but not what you bought.
Most people who are getting FS are legit, though – and until you’ve been there you have no idea how shitty it feels to be using them. I had people cry in my office because they had to come try to get help. Yes, there ARE people out there who have plenty of money and scam, and there are tons of completely worthless families out there who refuse to work and are content to live off of the government. These families in particular are what is breaking the system. Most people on FS are on them for a year or two while they fix their situation and get on with their lives.
I hated every second I was a welfare client. I loved my job as a caseworker but the pay was too low for me to make a career out of it. I am very, very thankful welfare was there when I needed it and I’m even more thankful I don’t need it anymore.
As for the concept of standing over people, watching what they buy – do you want to pay for the technology it’d take to do this, as well as staffing squads of Food Police to force people to use their FS “correctly” or lose 'em? Do you want to pay for even more caseworker to go make home visits of welfare recipients and give them the 3rd degree of where they got that Nintendo DS – knowing that there is NO WAY to disprove what they tell you?
Didn’t think so.
PandaBear77, have you considered starting a “Ask the…” thread? I’m sure lots of people would be interested in this topic.
I myself am curious about people who were legitimately “self employed” but maybe somewhat off the radar. Like, for instance, what about people who clean houses for a living? They get paid in cash, probably don’t get their wages declared. Were these people likely to tell the truth and estimate their incomes, or more likely to claim to be unemloyed altogether?
What about people in the country illegally? Were there loopholes for them (or their kids?) or was it pretty difficult for illegals to get food stamps and Medicaid?
My other issue is with the concept of “deserve” and the concept of “entitlement”. One woman once in my line at work was saying that “I cannot believe items x, y, and z do not count for my food stamps… I DESERVE them!” To which I wanted to say… you didn’t make the money to buy them, so no you do not. Consider yourself lucky and gracious that our country is so giving.
Our country is not particularly giving, and “entitlement” just means that it’s a program that is available to all who qualify, as opposed to programs that are available until funds are exhausted, or whatever.
I mean that the woman in question believed she deserved to have handed to her the items she thinks should have qualified on her food stamps but did not.
Yes, but what the uninformed-but-outraged always get upset about is the term “entitlement program”.
Also, there is some gray area on what qualifies. Some stores count things that others don’t, and some make mistakes in how they code products.
If I thought I could commit to an “Ask the” thread, I would. I might, one of these days 
I had a few housecleaners. Most of them would bring in statements from those they cleaned house for. Same for those who made money doing babysitting. Given the numbers they gave me (as in, their income tended to be at least a little bit more than their reported living expenses), I think most of them were telling the truth.
Strippers always lied, though.
Never saw an illegal alien. If you are undocumented - unless the rules have changed a lot - the ONLY thing you’ll ever get is emergency Medicaid – as in, emergency in that you’re in a car crash and in a coma or something. I don’t think even pregnancy Medicaid covered illegals although Medicaid would cover the baby when it was born.
It’s hard to get benefits even if you are legal. I had an interesting case of a girl who had immigrated from Mexico with her son. Generally - at the time, anyway - you had to have had your Green Card for 5 years before you could get ANYTHING. However, she was in the US because of some kind of domestic violence situation and therefore met a loophole, so she was able to get benefits even though she’d had her GC for only 3 years or so. There is a special code on every GC that sort of tells why someone is here and her code was on a short list of exceptions to the 5 year rule.
Where I work, prepared foods (pre-heated) do not get counted. This was the item purchased when I was referring to it.
Anyway, I apologize if I struck a nerve with some on here. In no way am I saying that welfare should be abolished or that people should have monitored to a T what they purchase. But to some extent, since you are not the ones paying for your EBT card, I do not believe you “deserve” any specific item nor should I refrain from commentary. The whole issue I have is with the idea that some think they deserve whatever they want, even though they are not the ones paying.
I understand the spirit of what you’re saying, apples, and I agree. Some people do have an ENORMOUS entitlement mentality and it disgusts those of us who don’t.
Expecting things you don’t deserve isn’t in any way restricted to food stamp recipients. I don’t think that’s what most people are taking issue with here though. The problem is that you haven’t thought this out at all. What do you want to do, personally go to their houses to see if their TV is small enough to not offend your sensibilities?
There are already rules and procedures in place and they’re not perfect, but they’re at least somewhat objective. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to learn what the current rules are and then propose workable alternatives.
Exactly. And to me, if you are spending your spare money on luxury items such as a nice TV, a nice car, or jewelry, that is money that could be paying for your food but now cannot, causing tax payers to have to do it for you just because you feel you “deserve” those items.
Argh…I went off of the poll title and didn’t realize the OP meant BEFORE receiving foodstamps. I’d like to change my vote please. 20 years ago, I was in the system and on foodstamps. I worked two jobs and was still considered “poor enough” to qualify. I do agree that one’s ability to buy certain items should be limited to actual food items.
I meant both but also that someone who put themselves in debt (and unable to buy food) via indulgent spending should not be rewarded with government assistance for their food.
I have no issue with food stamps and welfare as it was initially intended.. to get people who need it, back on their feet. My best friend uses multiple forms of government aid and she truly does need it.
Shit, you wouldn’t believe what middle class and wealthy people think they’re entitled to, including kiss-their-ass treatment, just because they’re not poor. Some people are just assholes.
I don’t believe in “deserve” as a concept for anyone. I will not talk to someone any more politely or kiss-ass just because they are wealthy, either!
I knew one woman at work with 4 nearly-grown kids, 3 baby-daddies, a higher paycheck than most of us there just because she’d been there longer, absoLUTELY designer clothes, handbags, shoes, and plastic surgery at least once a year, if not twice.
Also on food stamps.